Levels of problem solving

I'm blatantly stealing this from Matt Holden who taught it to me, but I think about it all the time and I want a reference page to be able to point myself and others too.

When working on a team, there are three levels to work on:

Level 1: Agree on the problem to be solved

Level 2: Agree on the approach to solving the problem

Level 3: Agree on the details

Many disagreements happen when you skip these levels or give level 3 feedback when people are looking for level 1 recognition.

2025-09-25